Is 'benchmark beating' by Australian firms evidence of earnings management?

Accounting and Finance

Volumn 45, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 553-576

  Coulton, Jeff ^a   Taylor, Sarah ^b   Taylor, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

Benchmark beating; Earnings management; Measuring unexpected accruals

Indexed keywords

EID: 31344481512     PISSN: 08105391     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-629X.2005.00145.x     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Basu, S., 1997, The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings, Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 3-37.
2. Beatty, A., B. Ke, and K. Petroni, 2002, Earnings management to avoid earnings declines across publicly and privately held banks, The Accounting Review 77, 547-570.
3. Beaver, W., M. McNichols, and K. Nelson, 2003a, Management of the loss reserve accrual and the distribution of earnings in the property-casualty insurance industry, Journal of Accounting and Economics 35, 347-376.
4. Beaver, W., M. McNichols, and K. Nelson, 2003b, An alternative interpretation of the discontinuity in earnings distributions, Working paper (Stanford University, Stanford, CA).
5. Brown, P., P. J. Lee, S. L. Taylor, and T. S. Walter, 2004, Are security analysts "walked down" to beatable forecasts'? Working paper (University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW).
6. Burgstahler, D., and I. Dichev, 1997, Earnings management to avoid decreases and losses, Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 99-126.
7. Coulton, J. J., and S. L. Taylor, 2004, The framing of management earnings forecasts: determinants, specificity and supporting disclosures, Working paper (University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW).
8. Dechow, P. M., S. Richardson, and I. Tuna, 2003, Why are earnings kinky? An examination of the earnings management explanation, Review of Accounting Studies 8, 355-384.
9. Dechow, P. M., and D. J. Skinner, 2000, Earnings management: reconciling the views of accounting academics, practitioners and regulators, Accounting Horizons 14, 235-250.
10. Dechow, P. M., R. G. Sloan, and A. P. Sweeney, 1995, Detecting earnings management, The Accounting Review 70, 193-225.
11. DeFond, M., and K. R. Subramanyam, 1998, Auditor changes and discretionary accruals, Journal of Accounting and Economics 25, 35-67.
12. Degeorge, F., J. Patel, and R. Zeckhauser, 1999, Earnings management to exceed thresholds, Journal of Business 72, 1-33.
13. Dichev, I., and D. J. Skinner, 2002, Large sample evidence on the debt-covenant hypothesis, Journal of Accounting Research 40, 1091-1123.
14. Durtschi, C., and P. Easton, 2004, The discontinuity in the earnings frequency distribution at zero: evidence of earnings management, scaling, or differences between loss firms and profit firms'? Working paper (University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame).
15. Hansen, J. C., 2004, Additional evidence on discretionary accrual levels of benchmark beaters, Working paper (University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL).
16. Hayn, C., 1995, The information content of losses, Journal of Accounting and Economics 20, 125-153.
17. Healy, P., 1996, Discussion of "A market-based evaluation of discretionary accrual models", Journal of Accounting Research 34 (Suppl), 107-115.
18. Holland, D., 2004, Earnings management: a methodological review of the distribution of reported earnings approach, Working paper (Monash University, Melbourne).
19. Holland, D., and A. Ramsay, 2003, Do Australian companies manage earnings to meet simple benchmarks?, Accounting and Finance 43, 41-62.
20. Hribar, P., and D. Collins, 2002, Errors in estimating accruals: implications for empirical research, Journal of Accounting Research 40, 105-134.
21. Jones, J. J., 1991, Earnings management during import relief investigations, Journal of Accounting Re search 29, 193-228.
22. Kahneman, D., and A. Tversky, 1979, Prospect theory: an analysis of decisions under risk, Econometrica 47, 263-291.
23. Richardson, S., S. Teoh, and P. Wysocki, 2004, The walkdown to beatable analyst forecasts: the roles of equity issuance and insider trading incentives, Contemporary Accounting Research 21, 885-924.
24. Thomas, J. K., 1989, Unusual patterns in reported earnings, The Accounting Review 64, 773-787.
25. Wells, P., 2002, Earnings management surrounding CEO changes, Accounting and Finance 42, 169-193.